• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.25 no.11
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• pp.1627-1634
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• 2021

This paper introduces a low-power compact ADC circuit for analog Convolutional filter for low-power neural network accelerator SOC. While convolutional neural network accelerators can speed up the learning and inference process, they have drawback of consuming excessive power and occupying large chip area due to large number of multiply-and-accumulate operators when implemented in complex digital circuits. To overcome these drawbacks, we implemented an analog convolutional filter that consists of an analog multiply-and-accumulate arithmetic circuit along with an ADC. This paper is focused on the design optimization of a low-power 8bit SAR ADC for the analog convolutional filter accelerator We demonstrate how to minimize the capacitor-array DAC, an important component of SAR ADC, which is three times smaller than the conventional circuit. The proposed ADC has been fabricated in CMOS 65nm process. It achieves an overall size of 1355.7㎛², power consumption of 2.6㎼ at a frequency of 100MHz, SNDR of 44.19 dB, and ENOB of 7.04bit.